France: A monstrous massacre, a dangerous “national unity” and a possible alternative (AWTWNS 12 January 2015)

This AWTWNS news packet for the week of 12 January 2015 contain one article. It may be reproduced or used in any way, in whole or in part, as long as it is credited.

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France: A monstrous massacre, a dangerous “national unity” and a possible alternative

14 January 2015. A World to Win News Service. The monstrous massacre of the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff by Islamic fundamentalists, like the wanton murder of four hostages at a kosher supermarket two days later, rightly shocked many millions of people. Much of France seems to be united by the slogan “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). But these words are being used by different classes with different and opposed interests. They cover very different perspectives on what happened and what should happen now.

In the hours following the massacre and on the following nights many thousands of middle class young people and others gathered to express their stunned outrage and comfort each other. Whether they had ever read the magazine or not, they carried signs saying “Je suis Charlie” to express solidarity with what they viewed as a symbol of a critical spirit they wanted to defend. They also chanted “Pas d’amalgame” (Don’t mix things up), meaning don’t use this to attack Muslims in general. The strong fear that it would – and that the future would be much worse than the present – heightened the tragic atmosphere.

But regardless of these concerns, the official response has had nothing to do with defending freedom of expression or any other kind of real freedom. President Francois Hollande staged two major public ceremonies following the Islamist attacks. One was a symbolic march from Place de la Republique in which 44 heads of state and government, the people in charge of perpetrating and maintaining the intolerable world order, literally walked arm in arm. The other was to award the highest rank in the Legion of Honour to the three police killed in the attacks.

France’s moment of national unity comes down to this: more than a million people marched behind the procession of the world’s rulers and their associates and flunkies at Paris’s Place de la Republique. And in an extremely unusual phenomenon in France, said to be unique at that square best known for protests, people spontaneously and repeatedly applauded the police.

In the name of defending democracy against Islamism, parliament immediately voted to reaffirm French participation in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the mission of the country’s 3,000 troops sent to re-establish French authority in its former colonies in west Africa. Leading politicians also united on the need to step up surveillance and control throughout society, establish France’s own vast databases on everyone instead of relying on the U.S., and vigorously police the Internet and public speech. “In France, certain positions are not an opinion – they are a crime,” warned Prime Minister Manuel Valls. He proclaimed that there will be a “before and after” the 7 January attack.

Between 9-13 January, at least six people were arrested, immediately tried under special procedures and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three months to four years for “public apology for terrorist act”. None were accused of any connection with jihadi groups or violent acts. Five were convicted of mouthing off to police while getting a ticket and/or in a state of extreme drunkenness, and one for comments on his Facebook page. It has been announced that police and prosecutors will pay special attention to rap videos, because they often express the kind of “hate speech” to be banned – hatred for the police and the unjust social order the police enforce. The police specialize in making life hell for youth in the country’s public housing ghettos long before Islamism (movements for an Islamic state) was very influential there, and the repression of this “dangerous class” has come to the top of the government’s agenda.

A large section of France’s lower classes (although far from all), and the most politically and socially oppressed, are the children of people from French colonies brought to work in the country’s assembly plants, construction sites and service industries. Because France has little or nothing to offer these youth but life-wasting unemployment punctuated by demeaning jobs, their very existence is considered a problem. Any impulse among them that could get out of control is considered a serious threat to the social order they are at the bottom of.

Today’ global collision between Western imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism is conditioning developments in these ghettos. Just as Islamism has wrongly come to be seen as a challenge to all that France and the West have inflicted on Africa and the Middle East, many French people whose origins lie in those countries (and even converts from among the poor of other origins) have wrongly come to see a reactionary, anti-people Islamic fundamentalism as a solution to the humiliation and misery inflicted upon them.

The concept of secularism (separation of church and state) arose out of the needs of the French bourgeoisie in its revolution against the feudal monarchy and a century of political battles against the Catholic Church, the chief representative of remnants of the old order. But in the mouths of the French ruling class today, it is little more than a code word for anti-Islamism, which in turn is driven not by disdain for religion but for the people who hold a particular set of religious beliefs, as if their religion were a sign of their inferiority and therefore a justification for their exclusion from certain privileges and their place in society. This is closely linked to France’s role in the broader Western imperialist effort to solidify control over the peoples and countries in the Middle East and North Africa where Islamic fundamentalism has been a major source of contention and opposition. It is not surprising that attacks on Islam are often seen as not a purely religious question, but as an attack on people’s identity and dignity as human beings.

Now even pro-government Muslims and Islamic organizations are being asked to take a public stand against terrorism, at least that kind of terrorism that France’s ruling circles oppose. All are to be considered guilty unless they acknowledge their acquiescence to the French power structure and its so-called “values”. In contrast, it would be considered racist to demand that French Jews – as Jews – take a public position against Israeli state terrorism in exchange for their right to practice their religion and hold to their religious and ethnic identity.

Those who warn that the massacres will “feed the ambitions of the far right” are not wrong, but the necessities faced by French imperialism overall should also be taken into account. The conditions that help foster the rise of Islamic fundamentalism have been created by the workings of monopoly capital itself, in France and globally, and will not go away. Everything French imperialism has done in the name of combating Islamism, from repression at home to foreign invasions in partnership and competition with the U.S., has only exacerbated that dynamic. In this situation, it is not just the fascist enemies of the republican form of bourgeois rule who are alarmed by the “softness” of France’s middle classes and determined to shake them out of their passivity and make them more active accomplices for French imperialism.

In a way, the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the supermarket slaughter could be considered a godsend for the French ruling class. These events have galvanized much of its squabbling ranks and called them to attention, served as a pretext for ratcheting up long-standing repression and foreign invasions, and above all, enabled it to bring a far broader section of the middle classes into greater support for its reactionary projects. No matter what many people may think “national unity” means right now – whether free speech, no exclusion of minorities, defence of secularism or even a “republican unity” against the fascist right – in reality it means rallying around a system and state – and its armed enforcers at home and abroad – that causes terrible suffering around the world and in France itself.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo is being called the equivalent of 11 September 2001 in the U.S., both by people who fear that France will follow the American example and those who believe that France’s ambitions require catching up in repression and foreign aggression. But things have not worked out well for the U.S. since then. Defiant resistance and revolutionary work there has proved to be a major mood-creating factor in the development of events, especially insofar as a more positive dynamic between the most oppressed and some of the middle classes has begun to emerge.

The polarisation of the population in France today is very unfavourable. The most oppressed are effectively surrounded. The middle classes, with some exceptions, are now generally inclined to look to the state for the solution to their fears and unease. The status quo is little loved, yet opposition to it has been left to contending Islamic and Catholic fundamentalists, and fascists, all united in the view that women’s submission is the keystone for the society they want. But the possibility for a different and far more favourable kind of polarization can also be glimpsed in today’s situation.

An increasing number of people in France “have come to believe that the lives their parents had to lead are not worthy of living,” a commentator wrote. Neither France’s capitalist “values” and institutions nor any kind of religious fundamentalism can offer a real way out of the oppression and degradation that imprison people at the bottom of society and actually make a liberating life possible for the broad majority. A vision of a different kind of society and a plan for getting it that represented something real could become an increasingly powerful alternative. A movement whose goal is the emancipation of humanity, with the oppressed among those at the forefront, could start to break away a huge section of the middle classes who are now saying “I am Charlie” from the grip of the ruling class and open the way to much more positive and liberating perspectives.

Editorial:

Introducing a transformed AWTWNS

14 March 2017. A World to Win News Service. With great joy, the editors of A World To Win News Service announce its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.

AWTW News Service first saw life in January 2003, at a critical juncture when under the banner of their global "war on terror" the US-led imperialists had launched and were expanding what was in fact a war for empire. After invading Afghanistan, they were preparing to invade Iraq. It was a time when a powerful people's war was surging forward in Nepal, led by revolutionaries who were participants in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. RIM gathered communists from around the world who, in the wake of the defeat of the revolution in China following the death of Mao Tsetung, banded together from the five continents to strengthen the struggle to do away with the capitalist system through revolution.

AWTW News Service was inspired by RIM, which based itself on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). During the years since then, the news service untiringly exposed the crimes of the imperialists in many corners of the globe, bringing to light stories of popular resistance against oppression, analysing how all oppression was ultimately rooted in the system of capitalism-imperialism, and pointing to the need for the solution, revolution.

These past fourteen years have seen major developments, including the collapse of RIM itself. Not only are some of the forces previously united in RIM now sharply opposed to each other, the previous understanding of revolutionary communism itself has, to borrow Mao Zedong’s term, "divided into two". One strand of the old Maoism has wound up in a social-democratic liquidation of the core revolutionary principles of Marxism, exemplified tragically in the capitulation of the Maoist leadership in Nepal and the termination of the revolutionary war there. Others from the previous MLM movement are stuck in a dogmatist, religious-like upholding of sterile "Maoist" formulas that are equally devoid of revolutionary content. In opposition to this, Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism has fully emerged, rescuing the scientific kernel of communism while criticizing and repudiating those secondary aspects in the past understanding and actions of communists that have actually gone against communism's liberatory nature. The result is that we now have a qualitatively more scientific framework for understanding the world and changing it through revolution, which is gaining adherents from among forces previously part of RIM as well as others more recently attracted to communism. (For more on RIM, its history, its collapse and the division of Maoism into two, see Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage – A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and Letter to Participating Parties and Organizations of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.)

And how the world cries out for revolution! Everywhere inequality has intensified, women face the violent intensification of patriarchy and degradation, and whole states in parts of the Third World are written off as "failed" and left to rot. The hopes of millions worldwide that soared as US-backed dictators were toppled by mass uprisings in the “Arab Spring” were dashed with the re-consolidation of reactionary rule. War has ripped gaping wounds in the Middle East as the Western imperialists and their local allies contend with reactionary Islamic jihadists, trapping the masses in a vortex of terror and despair. Millions have been driven from their homes, and thousands drown in desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean to safety – while those few who make it face ever higher walls erected by these same imperialists to keep them out, physical walls as well as the walls of hatred being whipped up against them. Now, after years of normalizing mounting levels of nationalist jingoism, racism and misogyny, the dynamics of this system have propelled the fascist Donald Trump into the post of commander-in-chief of US imperialism. This in turn is giving major impetus to fascist movements that have been steadily gnawing their way into the political mainstream of Europe – in Austria, Hungary and Poland, and now the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere. Throughout the oppressed nations too, the rise of “strong men” like India's Modi, Turkey's Erdogan, Duterte in the Philippines and others, tells the same story: the post-World War 2 order is rapidly coming apart at the seams.

The most fundamental question facing humanity today is whether this great turmoil will give rise to the establishment of regimes that are far more repressive and reactionary than even those today, with an unprecedented intensification of oppression and inequality, the unleashing of war and famine, environmental catastrophe and potentially far worse, or whether the oppressed can be enabled to rise, led by a core of conscious revolutionaries, and dismantle the existing state apparatuses in key parts of the world and establish radically new state powers that begin to do away with all oppression and exploitation. This has everything to do with how well hundreds and thousands today can be armed with a scientific approach to reality and act on that basis. Today this means transforming AWTW News Service into one firmly based on Avakian's new communism, a task that is proudly being assumed by the communists who have been the driving force in it over these years – a task that you are being asked to join in, in countless ways: reposting, distributing, writing, reporting, debating and corresponding with it, to name but a few.

Articles are needed that lay bare how the source of every kind of oppression in every country is ultimately rooted in the capitalist-imperialist system, whether it be through analysing the coup d'etat in Turkey, the failure of the Syriza experiment in Greece, the rise of fascism in the US and Europe, etc.

The news service needs analysis that lays bare the major faultlines ripping through every class-divided society and propelling millions into questioning and resistance, to help increasing numbers make the leap from being fighters on one front against capitalist oppression to fighters on every front. To take just one example, it needs to highlight the many different ways that brave forces are stepping outside normal channels to resist the draconian measures being enacted against migrants, exposing how it is the capitalist-imperialist system that is driving immigration and clamping down on migrants. It has to help establish a powerful internationalist current around this burning issue – showing why and how it is essential that the "whole world comes first", rather than "what does this mean for me and my country" – so as to bridge borders between peoples, to change not only what people think but how they think, to train them in the communist line and outlook. Or, in relation to patriarchy, to bring out why you cannot break all the links in the chain of capitalist oppression except one, why leaving male supremacy unchallenged quickly opens the door to the strengthening of every form of division and inequality. All this is part of the process of "fighting the power and transforming the people, for revolution" – and not least of all, bringing forth a new generation of revolutionary leaders in this process, who can use this news service to help identify and bring together more revolutionary forces wherever they may be.

It is critical to expose the system and its institutions and structures, but it is also vital to put forward the solution, a new kind of state power and a new way of organising the society and economy to meet people's needs in the broadest, most liberating sense, and step-by-step enable people to make the transition, through revolution, to a whole new world of flourishing humanity, armed with critical thinking and free of the shackles of class, patriarchy and all social divisions and inequalities. To do this we need to take on and tear apart the reactionary verdict on revolution and socialism. Otherwise, our criticism of the existing system loses force and purpose. Furthermore, based on the new synthesis summation of the socialist experiences of the 20th century, we need to show the necessity, possibility and desirability of Avakian's re-envisaged socialist society – how it not only meets the basic needs of the people, but will be a vibrant society marked by an unprecedented flourishing of intellectual and cultural life.

Without BA's new communism and the understanding that has developed on the basis of his approach and method, even for those who have vital elements of understanding about how thoroughly rotten all that exists really is, it is difficult to understand that the world doesn't have to be the way it is, that the potential for a radically different way of living for all humanity lies entangled in today's web of contradictions that are driving society, trapping oppressed humanity in dog-eat-dog relations, and threatening unprecedented disasters. Avakian's visionary understanding of the goal of communism shows how that is not only possible, but an urgent necessity, crying out for action right now.

With this understanding as the solid foundation of the news service, its pages will be open to others who, from different perspectives and approaches, bring to the light of day otherwise hidden stories of resistance and opposition to the prevailing order, shed light on the crimes of the system and how it works, reveal the complexity of the forces at work, and do all this in a way that compels others to turn to this site as a vibrant hub of critical analysis and debate. To truly become a weapon for revolution in growing parts of the world, articles need to be shared, correspondence is needed, key articles translated into different languages, and more. To further this, the news service will rupture from its weekly edition format that has been more oriented to the print media epoch, and instead focus on releasing articles on the Web hot on the heels of major events in the world. We need contributions from all those able to help so that the now far too narrow scope of our articles, limited by our current abilities, can begin to better match the needs of what must necessarily be a global revolutionary process.

Hard truths need to be stated clearly from the outset: the strength of the forces worldwide fighting for communist revolution pales in comparison to the immense challenges before us. But it is an even more important truth that never before in history has there existed a clearer and more scientific understanding of the source of oppression and what is needed to do away with it. On this foundation, A World To Win News Service can and must become a powerful tool serving all those who long for an end to oppression and exploitation, drawing forward and training thousands and influencing millions in many countries around the world, hastening the day when humanity can break free of the shackles that have enchained it for all too long.